


Erratic Oscillation Part I

by flamethrower



Series: Re-Entry: Journey of the Whills [36]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, F/M, GFY, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-05
Updated: 2014-12-05
Packaged: 2018-02-28 07:08:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2723288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamethrower/pseuds/flamethrower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you remember anything?"</p><p>"Just...fragments."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Erratic Oscillation Part I

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't leave you guys with *nothing* for another week, so I broke this down into smaller chapters. ...Yay?
> 
> I couldn't get this to some of my betas due to time constraints, so this week's betabetabeta credit goes to Norcumi & KittenFair
> 
> EDIT: I completely forgot some links. See notes at the end!

Obi-Wan pulled himself together long enough to shower off yesterday’s saltwater, along with the blood and sand of the morning. The lukewarm water helped with the headache, too, which faded from skull-splitting disaster to dull roar.

When he came back out to the kitchen, Qui-Gon asked for him to hold still, using nothing more than a raised hand and the familiar look of command in his eyes. Obi-Wan held his breath as Qui-Gon healed the damage he’d done to his larynx. It was the simplest brush of warm fingertips against the column of his throat, but it left him a convoluted, emotional mess. If Qui-Gon noticed either reaction, he was kind enough not to mention it.

Obi-Wan then apologized to Ulic. Terrified or not, he _had_ thrown Ulic through a wall.

The ancient Jedi just smirked at him. “How much of that apology did you really mean?”

Obi-Wan thought about it, fiddling with the edge of his left sleeve. “About three-quarters,” he admitted. His heart still triple-timed it if he thought about that brief moment, horrified that he had blanked out and killed everyone else on Mortis.

He had to order himself not to think about that; he could _feel_ the time disparity now. The bonds were muffled, yet layered, as if the Force was trying to compensate for the fact that Obi-Wan was not quite where he belonged.

“I need to see it,” Obi-Wan said, and from the look on the faces of his companions, they understood exactly what he meant.

“Sure.” Ulic put down his tea.

“That’s a _terrible_ idea,” Qui-Gon said in a sharp voice, glaring at Ulic.

“No, it isn’t.” Ulic’s voice was softer, but there was steel in his words. “I know why he needs to see it, Jinn, and the kid knows his own mind.”

Without warning, Ulic teleported them all to the island right at that moment. “There we go.”

“Never do that again,” Obi-Wan gasped, closing his eyes until he could regain his equilibrium. “Not without warning me, at least.” It hadn’t hurt, but without that necessary second of preparation, he felt like he’d damn near left half of his innards back at the house.

“Dammit, Ulic,” Qui-Gon snapped, looking agitated by the sudden change of scenery.

“Right.” Ulic looked sheepish. “Sorry, forgot that it’s a different kind of trip if you’re still alive.”

“Living or not,” Qui-Gon groused, pushing his hair back from his face, “that’s a shoddy damned ride if you don’t _warn_ your victim first.”

Obi-Wan looked down at pale sand, brilliant under the sunlight. He could remember arriving with Ulic, struggling to counter Fire and Entroija both. His eyes were blazing; there was wet sand beneath his knees and the scent of salt water sharp in his nose. There was a moment of fear, the realization that he was so very close to doing what he had once told Rillian of—burning himself alive from the inside out.

“How long did you last, after I dropped you off?” Ulic wanted to know.

“Not long.” Obi-Wan stepped onto the path, the firm coast giving way to shifting dry sand that was harder to walk through. He had another flash of memory, but didn’t see any of the blades he could remember discarding. “Where are my things?”

“The knives? I’ve got them,” Ulic said. “Didn’t need them to be a temptation, or become a trigger.”

“No, the dead bodies upstairs worked just nicely as a trigger instead,” Obi-Wan muttered.

The path was short, ending in a small clearing that butted up against a sheer cliff face. The sand in the center of the clearing was blackened, glossy, and jagged—melted into slag from what must have been an intense release of energy.

Obi-Wan stared at the created glass, unnerved. That really explained a lot about the state of his clothes—about that _smell._

 _He was not expecting you._ His voice, and yet not his voice at all.

 _Then that makes us even, as I was not expecting_ you _._ Qui-Gon. There had been…recognition? Terror? Denial? Obi-Wan couldn’t piece together any more of what had happened in that moment.

“Do you remember anything?” Qui-Gon asked. Obi-Wan glanced up at him; Qui-Gon had his arms crossed and looked as if he would prefer to be anywhere else.

“Just…fragments,” Obi-Wan replied, squatting down to run his hand over the black lumps of glass. He hissed in a startled breath when unexpectedly sharp edges sliced into his fingertips.

“You used him as bait.” That was not memory, but recognition of the elements in play.

“Yeah.” Ulic didn’t appear flippant, which would have been irritating. “There was no way I was going to be able to get close enough to help you on my own. You would have shredded me into nothing, and Kid, I happen to like my existence.”

Obi-Wan nodded. “Understandable.”

“I couldn’t use a living being as bait, because anything alive would have been fried by the energy storm before they could get within four meters of you.” Ulic grinned. “You were putting on one hell of a light show when I got back. Qui-Gon managed to snag your attention, giving me the chance needed.”

Obi-Wan stood up, holding his thumb against his fingers to press the stinging wounds closed. “You were trusting that I wouldn’t hurt him. What if you had been wrong?”

“I wasn’t, was I?” Ulic didn’t seem concerned, but then, this event was possibly just an interesting, brief blip in his long life. Obi-Wan looked at Qui-Gon, who nodded. Truth, then; he had not harmed his Master.

“Did you find my comm?”

Ulic lifted his head in surprise. “No, I didn’t find a comm. All I recovered were the blades.”

The wind shifted, picking up a tiny piece of charred fabric to flutter half-heartedly in the breeze. Mortis had stolen him away from the _Speckled Band_ without his cloak, but Obi-Wan had been wearing more layers than what he’d awoken with in the white stone house.

 _Burnt from the inside out, and the outside in,_ Obi-Wan thought, before resolutely turning away from the sight of that dancing shred of char. “I ditched the comm when I was divesting myself of weaponry. It’s somewhere along the path.”

Ulic frowned. “I didn’t see anything else.”

It was the first time he felt like smiling since his arrival on this tiny island. “You wouldn’t have,” Obi-Wan said, leaving the circle behind. Ulic was correct in that Obi-Wan had needed to see it, but that didn’t mean he wanted to _remember_ it. Surviving was prize enough.

The wrist comm was about halfway down the path. He discovered it by feel rather than sight; it was still in camouflage mode, and looked just like the sand it was half-buried in. He pulled it free and activated it via the biometric identification. The comm revealed itself, a flat strip of flex-pad balanced across the palm of his left hand.

“That’s new,” Qui-Gon said, peering at the flex-pad.

Obi-Wan nodded. “It’s a prototype.”

“Shiny,” Ulic said. “I want one.”

Obi-Wan gave him a curious look. “Why?”

“Well,” Ulic began, with a sly grin, “I can’t use it elsewhere, but I can _always_ come to Mortis. It would be useful at those times— _if_ you can get the monolith working properly again.”

“Oh, so it’s not supposed to eat people?” Obi-Wan let the flex-pad wrap itself around his right wrist, but didn’t re-engage the camouflage. No reason to, at the moment.

“Ah, no.” Ulic made a face. “That explains why I couldn’t find a transport when the four of you arrived. Pulled you from the ship, did it?”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan said. “Right after…” He trailed off, eyes narrowing in realization. “It was Isuheel. We were yanked from the ship the moment the balance of the Prophecy was mentioned.”

“Meddling dead fuck,” Ulic groused. “And if anyone is allowed to call him that, it’s a fellow meddling dead fuck.”

“He doesn’t seem intent on causing harm,” Qui-Gon said.

“He claimed not to want to harm anyone last time, and look how fucking well _that_ turned out,” Ulic countered.

Obi-Wan dismissed his concerns about Isuheel, for the moment, while bringing the comm’s display back to full power. It was hard to plan for the actions of a ghost, especially one that had possibly lost his damn mind before his kids finished growing.

The comm’s calendar function, lacking any satellites to synch to, had continued to plod along using the _Band’s_ shipboard time. “Fuck, I was out for three days?”

“You needed the time,” Qui-Gon said in a curt voice.

Ulic shrugged. “We almost killed you,” he said, which earned him a blistering glower from Qui-Gon that Ulic blithely ignored. “The fact that you woke up on your own three days after the fact is thanks to your talented healer—not me, by the way. Wellspring proximity helps, too. If this had gone down anywhere else, you’d be…well. Unhappy, to say the least.”

“Ulic. Qui-Gon.” Obi-Wan smiled at them both. “I don’t care if you had to yank my internal organs, strip everything out, and then somehow fit everything back into place. The alternative was much worse.”

“Well, that was descriptive, and I do not want breakfast anymore,” Ulic said in revulsion.

Considering that Qui-Gon bore an equally disturbed look, Obi-Wan wondered if he’d stumbled too close to the truth. “Did you actually…?”

“Oh, no. Hell, no, not at all,” Ulic interrupted him. “Metaphysical fishing,” he said, and waved around his suddenly intangible arm to demonstrate, though he was grimacing as he did it.

“Oh.” Obi-Wan didn’t think he wanted to remember that, either. “Was there anything left of Entroija?”

“Not…much,” Qui-Gon answered him. “Nothing that survived removal, anyway.”

“Good.” Obi-Wan knew that his reply was laced in acid. Fire had seemed like the lesser of two terrible options, easier for anyone to deal with than Entroija, and he had been in no mood to be forgiving. Sidious had left Obi-Wan with little patience for beings who thought they had a right to climb inside his head whenever they wished.

“Huh! Didn’t realize it was you who’d shredded the little fucker,” Ulic said, pleased. “I thought it was just a side-effect of Fire.”

Qui-Gon looked concerned. “Yoda taught you how to do that?”

Obi-Wan nodded. “He thought it might be useful.”

“Well, he wasn’t wrong.” Ulic’s smile had a sharp edge.

“No.” Obi-Wan felt a moment of sadness, but it was brief. Whatever Entroija had once been, he’d long since left childhood behind.

Even beyond Entroija’s soul-death, Obi-Wan felt caught between several conflicting emotions, all trying to hit at once. He didn’t quite know how to handle it, not after months of unceasing rage.

 _Something. Do_ something, Obi-Wan thought. “Ulic, could you…oh, go away for a minute?”

Ulic laughed. “See you guys back at the house,” he said, and vanished.

Qui-Gon looked startled by Ulic’s swift departure. “What is it?”

“Please shut up,” Obi-Wan ordered Qui-Gon. He took three steps forward and hugged him.

Qui-Gon froze, his breath stilling in his chest. Then his strong arms encircled Obi-Wan, an embrace that quickly tightened almost to the point of pain.

“I didn’t expect that,” Qui-Gon explained in a quiet voice. “Are you all right?”

“This is really fucking awkward,” Obi-Wan replied. “However, I waited a very long time to get the chance to do this, and I’m not stupid enough to turn down the opportunity.” The words were muffled; he had his face pressed against several layers of tunics, and all he could smell was his mate. No difference between them, not that way. None at all.

“A very long time?” Qui-Gon repeated, sounding troubled. He stepped back, letting his hands rest gently upon Obi-Wan’s shoulders as he looked down at him. Obi-Wan met his gaze squarely, feeling the echo of long separation that had once plagued him.

Qui-Gon sucked in a breath. “Force. You remember everything that came before.” He sounded as if he wasn’t sure he believed it.

“Of course I remember,” Obi-Wan replied, intrigued by Qui-Gon’s reaction. It didn’t make sense, not if there was a true separation—

“All of it?” Qui-Gon whispered.

Obi-Wan lowered his chin a fraction. He let the echo of it resound in his voice as he held his Master’s gaze. “Yes. All of it.”

Qui-Gon closed his eyes, as if pained. “Force.” When he looked at Obi-Wan again, his expression was solemn. “Let’s go back. I would prefer to continue this conversation in a place far more…pleasant.”

“Dead people on the second floor,” Obi-Wan felt the need to point out.

Qui-Gon glanced back at the clearing before the cliff face. “Still preferable to this.”

When put that way, Obi-Wan wanted to leave, also. “I can—”

“No.” Qui-Gon gave him a look of fond exasperation. “Obi-Wan, you have to let yourself finish healing. No teleporting, no lifting, no mind-speech, no _anything._ Not until I say.”

Obi-Wan frowned, but held out his hand. With the awareness of what was coming, this teleport was smooth, and didn’t even jar him as they appeared on the beach before the house.

“If meditation is on your list of things I’m not supposed to do, I will stage a revolt,” Obi-Wan said, in complete seriousness. “I haven’t been able to meditate for almost three damned months, Qui. I’d like my sanity back.”

“Nearly three months?” Qui-Gon’s eyes shone with sympathy. “Fire?”

Obi-Wan nodded. “It’s hard to settle if you are actively raging about everything around you, all the time.” He tried for a wry smile. “I couldn’t sleep, either. Made for an interesting time.”

He could tell the smile had not had its intended effect, not when Qui-Gon looked so frustrated. “I am sorry.”

“Not your doing in the slightest,” Obi-Wan countered, looking up at the house. Suddenly, the thought of being inside those stone walls was too confining. He’d blasted enough holes into the building for one day. “Walk with me?”

Qui-Gon didn’t answer, but fell into step beside him. The beach wasn’t long; the sand gave way to the island cliffs after about half a kilometer, but it was sheer relief to be outside.

The sun was warm, the heat soothing instead of oppressive. The coastal wind was gentle, but Obi-Wan couldn’t help but think that the last time he had trudged through loose sand with this man at his side, only one of them had been alive.

 _And that’s still true now,_ Obi-Wan thought.

By the time the beach started to become ocean-washed gravel, potential melancholy had departed in favor of a more direct opinion of the situation.

“What’s that particular look for?” Qui-Gon asked.

“My life is fucked up,” Obi-Wan said, and bit his lip against the near-hysterical laughter that wanted to emerge.

Qui-Gon smiled. “You did adapt to Mortis much more quickly than I expected. I have to admit, I thought there would be more…”

“Shock? Bewilderment? Mental flailing?” Obi-Wan shrugged, kicking one of the larger loose stones so that it skittered across the rocky beach and bounced off the rising cliff face. “Once you’ve been dead, the concept of energy translation isn’t all that hard to grasp.”

Silence met that statement. Obi-Wan glanced up to find an utterly shocked look on Qui-Gon’s face. “And…you didn’t know that.”

Qui-Gon shook his head, but the shock didn’t leave his features entirely. “I didn’t, no.”

“Oh.” Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon turned around at the base of the cliffs, heading back towards the house. The surf was loudest here, slamming into solid rock. He waited until they were once again pacing alongside the calmer shoreline before speaking again. “When _is_ this, for you?”

Qui-Gon halted, hesitation obvious in the way his eyes focused on the incoming waves. “It’s…this is hard for me. The last time I saw you, it was just after I’d temporarily severed the anchor point. Not long after I left for that promised month’s time.”

“I—” Obi-Wan closed his mouth, thrown by the realization that twenty years lay between them.

In the last few days, both Ulic and Qui-Gon had commented that Obi-Wan seemed unusually closed-off.   He’d been confused at the time, but now he knew why. It had been hard work to keep Fire from affecting everything around him, and when he’d regained consciousness, Obi-Wan hadn’t remembered that those thick shields still existed. The same could be said for all of his bonded connections to others. The mental walls that had protected his loved ones from Fire’s emotional storm had also kept the existence of those links from being discovered.

It was the anchor point Obi-Wan turned to now, checking on that latent connection in his mind. It was not one he could control, since he’d not instigated its creation, but he could follow its paths.   The anchor was still connected to his Lifemate, three weeks distant, but also present beyond the confines of Mortis.

The anchor _also_ recognized the man standing in front of Obi-Wan. There was an echo of a connection between them, a thin and insubstantial ghost of what was—because for Qui-Gon, for _this_ man, the anchor point had been temporarily severed. The anchor point would shine again when it was reforged on Tatooine, a moment that was now years past for Obi-Wan. Qui-Gon had allowed him to participate in the process, to feel the anchor point’s creation. It was harder to figure out the nuances of an anchor point bond while one was still living, but Obi-Wan had managed well enough. He’d managed to create anchor points with both Luke and Leia, after all.

At the time, neither he nor his Master had openly discussed it…but they had both known that Obi-Wan’s time in that other-when had almost run out.

The Lifebond was more active than the anchor point. Now that Obi-Wan was paying attention, it was chiming an insistent recognition of its other half. _I-know-you,_ it said, over and over, _but not-yet not-yet not-yet._

 _There is no separation,_ Obi-Wan thought, as shock reverberated in his mind. But how—

A flash of memory, a conversation held from when he was purely Venge: _I was thinking about types of bonds._

“Huh,” Obi-Wan said, tilting his head as puzzle-pieces began to fit together.

“Obi-Wan?” Qui-Gon had turned to face him, eyes narrowed in concern.

_Integration is key. The moment that integration process began, the anchor point bond existed for me…and once it existed for me, it also existed for you._

Qui-Gon, his mate, in complete disbelief: _You’re saying that the only reason I don’t remember things the way you and Anakin do is because I haven’t spent a prolonged amount of time unconscious._

_Recollection facilitated by the anchor point. You dream in fragments of memory from that time._

“I remember everything,” Obi-Wan said in a low voice, repeating his earlier statement from the burnt island. “As does Anakin. As does Sidious. And, sometimes…so do you.”

“Obi-Wan—”

“It was you,” Obi-Wan whispered, staring up at Qui-Gon. “You did it. You sent us back.”

Qui-Gon paled, but he met Obi-Wan’s eyes, resolute. “It would be more correct to say that I _intend_ to. I….I have not actually done it yet.”

“Well, then.” Obi-Wan could feel some of Venge creeping into his voice, his expression. “Thus, you have learned that you will be successful before the venture has been truly undertaken.”

Qui-Gon grimaced. “When Ulic came to get me, I’d only just realized that it would have to be all three of you for it to work. Sidious had to be included, much as I wished to leave him floundering after his final death.”

“The prophecy.” Somehow, Obi-Wan was not surprised. “Wouldn’t it have been easier if none of us remembered?”

“The _original_ prophecy of the Chosen One,” Qui-Gon stressed. “It’s so important to this era that it’s as if it is written into time. Your memory of past events became a part of the prophecy’s weave, and thus its inclusion is unavoidable. Even if the prophecy later becomes less important due to the choices that the three of you make, part of it will still hold sway over things to come.”

 _“One who is both,”_ Obi-Wan quoted, suppressing a flare of irritation. He didn’t think Qui-Gon had yet realized how much sway the prophecy still held.

“I just…I don’t understand,” Qui-Gon continued, looking flustered as he shoved his windblown hair back from his eyes. “I shouldn’t remember _any_ of it. Everything I’ve studied said that it wasn’t supposed to work that way. It would only be the three of you who would remember. No one else.”

“Did you want to forget?” Obi-Wan asked, tilting his head.

“No, I didn’t, but…” Qui-Gon blinked a few times, as if caught off guard. “Obi-Wan, your eyes—”

“They do that sometimes.” Fire was not beating at him; this was like languid, slow-moving heat. “As for the rest: Qui-Gon, you are forgetting that anchor points transcend time.”

“Actually, I don’t think I ever knew that until this moment,” Qui-Gon said, his eyes widening in realization. “That…damn, that changes everything!”

“No. It. Does. Not.”

Qui-Gon leaned back, a barely perceptible motion. “You’re angry with me.”

“No.” Obi-Wan considered it for a moment. “This isn’t anger.”

“Then what is—” Qui-Gon’s gasped when Obi-Wan reached up, letting his fingertips run down Qui-Gon’s cheek and drift along the trim line of his beard.

“I do not know what this is,” Obi-Wan admitted, repeating the caress on the other side of Qui-Gon’s face. Qui-Gon was staring at him, as if caught and immobilized. “But I am not angry with you. Lately, I have only been angry at one person, and you have provided me with the means to kill him. Why would I be angry with you about that?”

Qui-Gon caught Obi-Wan’s hand, pulling it down and capturing it between his warm palms. It was an electrical brilliance, and yet the feel of his skin was utterly familiar, a contradiction that sharpened Obi-Wan’s focus.

“That is not what this was for,” Qui-Gon said in a soft voice.

“Then why?”

Qui-Gon went so silent, so still, that the sudden lack of movement caused a lurch of fear in Obi-Wan’s chest. He curled his fingers, tightening his grip on the hands that held him.

“I witnessed so much horror, both before and after my death,” Qui-Gon began. “And so much of it seemed to be focused upon you. Yinchorr. Tahl’s murder. The Naboo invasion. The Sith. That damned war. Anakin—” Qui-Gon took a breath and then continued. “Palpatine revealing himself. The Purges.

“Then, when you went back to Coruscant…” Qui-Gon freed his left hand, reaching up so that his fingertips brushed Obi-Wan’s temple. “I watched over you there, when you were with Sidious. I almost lost my mind in the process. Never had I felt so keenly that there was _nothing_ I could do to help you.”

“But someone else could,” Obi-Wan pointed out. “Xanatos was there.”

That earned him a slight, genuine smile. “He was, yes. He never could figure out what gave him away, but he rather enjoyed the fact that your lightsaber put a lot of holes in those cursed black walls.”

“He…he came to visit me on Tatooine, while you were gone.” Obi-Wan smiled. “Confused the hell out of me at the time.”

“I imagine it must have,” Qui-Gon said, but his faint smile had vanished, and he wouldn’t meet Obi-Wan’s eyes. “That day, when I told you about—about the motivations behind my behavior on Naboo, my actions during our battle against Maul.” When Qui-Gon offered him a quick, darting glance, Obi-Wan nodded encouragement.

“I’d never seen you lose so much of yourself.” Qui-Gon’s gaze went distant. “It was like my confession was the last straw, and I’d just witnessed your resolve finally break, all because of _my_ mistake. I’d just watched _you_ break.”

Qui-Gon drew in a deep breath. “And I couldn’t bear it any longer. I couldn’t just stand by and helplessly watch the universe destroy you. Not without trying to do something about it,” he said. His eyes were glinting, his face full of fierce, protective anger.

Obi-Wan had spent a lot of time speculating what had happened to himself and Anakin over the past six years. His private files and journals were littered with half-developed theories and wild guesses. This particular reason had never so much as crossed his mind.

“You—you wanted—you’re doing this because of _me?_ ”

Qui-Gon nodded once, his throat bobbing as he swallowed. “Yes. For you.”

Obi-Wan stared at Qui-Gon, a wealth of emotions rocketing through him: shock, horror, anger, sympathy, confusion. Awe, definitely. He wasn’t—he wasn’t _worth_ this kind of cosmic shuffle!

Obi-Wan swallowed against a suddenly dry mouth. “You are telling me that you plan on tearing apart the fabric of reality on my behalf.”

Qui-Gon gazed down at him, sober and serious. “Did I do the right thing?”

Obi-Wan let out a brief laugh. “Oh, Qui. You said to me not long ago that we seem to do everything out of order…and you had _no idea_ how truthful you were being.”

“What do you mean?” Qui-Gon asked, looking a touch more animated.

“Remember the night we stayed on the roof, and I told you of a dream I’d had years before—the one I had on Naboo after foolishly deciding to go visit that damned power station?”

Qui-Gon seemed confused by the reference. “I remember.”

Obi-Wan smiled at his Master, the man he’d chosen to love so very long ago. “You did get around to it, after all.”

Qui-Gon’s eyebrows rose. “Oh! You’re saying that he—that I did that _here_. But how does that answer my question?”

“Master, I am…possibly not the best person to ask,” Obi-Wan said, heaving a sigh. “I’m a touch biased on the subject.”

Qui-Gon frowned. “How so?”

“Close your eyes,” Obi-Wan said, and had to swallow again as nervousness tried to overwhelm him. “No peeking,” he added in a teasing voice, because Venge was not very far away, and this had the hint of a game.

Obi-Wan rolled his left sleeve up above his elbow, and then took Qui-Gon’s hand. He guided Qui-Gon’s fingers until they settled directly into the furrow of the long scar that ran from Obi-Wan’s wrist nearly to his elbow.

Qui-Gon jerked, startled, as he recognized what he was touching. “Obi-Wan, I—I’m so sorry.”

“Shh.” Obi-Wan tilted his head, watching the play of conflicting emotions dance across his Master’s face. “You know, when the block was active, I couldn’t even see this—couldn’t even feel it. I suspect a really good Force Illusion hid it from me, but when memory came back, so did the scar.

“I chose to do that. I chose to spill my blood. I knew what I was doing, what it meant—that it was the only success to be had out of a miserable failure.” Obi-Wan brushed his thumb across the knuckles of Qui-Gon’s hand. “But that is only what can be felt. It is nothing more than a faded reminder of what once was…but there is no law that states it must always be so. I chose to turn it into a reminder of what is, for what we can see? That can always change.

“Open your eyes and see, Qui-Gon.”

Obi-Wan watched as Qui-Gon stared in astonishment at the blue and green ink, the shimmering text, lines, and shapes that marked him from wrist to just above his elbow. The scar from his attempted martyrdom could be felt if he searched for it by touch, but the tattooed sleeve meant that it could no longer be seen.

“It’s beautiful,” Qui-Gon said in a reverent voice, running his fingers across the indigo cuff at Obi-Wan’s wrist.

Obi-Wan smiled. “Read it.”

Qui-Gon gave him a curious look, but dropped his eyes to the text, following the Alderaani script with his fingers. The further he read, the more stunned amazement radiated from him, turning into near-visible eddies of the Force.

At last, Qui-Gon looked up at him. His eyes were wide and shocked, his mouth hanging open. “These are—these are bonding vows.”

Obi-Wan nodded. “They are.” He tilted his head, not sure he knew how to translate what he was seeing on Qui-Gon’s face.

“I—” Qui-Gon hesitated. “You bear a trader’s half-sleeve, covered in Jedi Lifebonding vows, marked by our names.”

“Yes, I do.” Obi-Wan drew himself up to his full height. “I am At’talr,” he said in a soft voice. “I write my vows on my skin, and sanctify them with my own blood.”

Qui-Gon seemed to be baffled by the revelation. “Why are you showing me this?”

“Because there is no difference between the man for whom I bear those vows, and the man that stands before me.” Obi-Wan knew his smile was crooked and just shy of impish. “Which is why my impartiality is suspect.”

The beginnings of a smile curled Qui-Gon’s lips. “You kept staring at my hair.”

“I’m not used to it being that color,” Obi-Wan replied.

Qui-Gon began twining his fingers around the long strands of hair that fell in front of Obi-Wan’s ear. “A bit less stress?”

“A bit less loss,” Obi-Wan countered. “And though he is currently fine, Micah still managed to get himself shot,” he couldn’t resist adding.

Qui-Gon burst out laughing, which was when Obi-Wan darted in and kissed him. There was a brief moment when Qui-Gon held absolutely still. Then Obi-Wan found himself seized about the shoulders, the kiss becoming a fierce, near-bruising pressure against his lips. The Force was all but singing, feeding Obi-Wan a shocking rush of intense lust and adoration.

Without thought, Obi-Wan opened himself to the familiar feel of his lover’s mouth. Qui-Gon’s agile tongue darted into his mouth, tasting and teasing. Obi-Wan groaned as heat flared in his limbs, fire and want pooling in his belly.

“Oh, dear.” Qui-Gon broke the kiss, his words a quiet gasp. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

Obi-Wan sighed, lowering his head. “No, I suppose not.”

“Obi-Wan, no.” Qui-Gon placed his fingers under Obi-Wan’s chin and lifted his head. “Not what I meant. It’s…we’re in a wellspring. If we—it would be _intense_. I am not risking your health, not for that.” He smiled. “Much as I might wish to.”

“That’s…probably best.” Even those few seconds of contact had refueled his earlier headache. He felt light-headed, but not for any good reason. “I’m really not all right, not now…but I’d like it if you were still around when I _am_.”

“Let’s go back,” Qui-Gon suggested, after they both stared at each other without speaking for a bit too long. Silence reigned as they walked back to the house, but their arms brushed against together with every step taken.

“I…maybe I should not have been quite so sudden with that particular revelation,” Obi-Wan ventured at last.

Qui-Gon smiled. “It was quite a shock. I’d wondered why you spent so much time worrying at your sleeve.”

Obi-Wan ducked his head. “I couldn’t remember what it was for. I just knew that it was important.”

“Oh, it definitely is that,” Qui-Gon agreed, grasping Obi-Wan’s hand. Their palms rested together, fingers splayed but not quite entwined.

When they reached the stone steps for the courtyard, Obi-Wan couldn’t resist asking, “This isn’t quite what you’d planned to be doing for that month you were going to be gone, is it?”

“Not in the slightest,” Qui-Gon said, chuckling. He glanced down at Obi-Wan. “I told you that I would come back at the end of the month. Was I late?”

“Something like that,” Obi-Wan said, realizing as he spoke that he could never let on exactly how late Qui-Gon had been. The shock on his Master’s face on that long-ago day had been genuine.

Qui-Gon sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Obi-Wan smiled up at him. “You were there right when I needed you to be.”

 

*          *          *          *

 

Obi-Wan managed to eat lunch, but if someone had asked him later, he wouldn’t have been able to say what he ate. His head was too full, and he’d been warned off of meditation for at least the next three days.

He’d nearly lost his temper at that decree. “Qui-Gon, I told you, I have not been able to meditate for almost three fucking months,” he snarled.

Qui-Gon was sympathetic, but firm. “Then it can wait just a little longer.”

Ulic and Qui-Gon wound up re-sealing the room with the ancient Jedi corpses. Qui-Gon had been the one to mention the possibility of a pyre, something Obi-Wan would have considered just and proper, but then responsibility reared its annoying head.

“Am I going to be able to come back here?” he asked Ulic.

Ulic nodded. “Sure. As long as you can get the monolith construct to obey you, you can come back to this place whenever you want.”

Obi-Wan sighed. “Then, much as I would prefer otherwise, we leave them as we found them. I don’t want to be beaten to death by the Temple archaeologists.”

“Yeah, best not to risk it,” Ulic said thoughtfully. “That lot can get bloodthirsty.”

It wasn’t the best segue in the galaxy, but the mention of blood reminded him of what was still missing. Ulic, to his surprise, refused to grant the request.

“Is there a reason why I can’t have my knives back?” Obi-Wan didn’t necessarily need them at the moment, but he also hadn’t seen a single blade since dumping them in the sand. The loss was like an itch at the back of his mind, and it was annoying.

“Because you threw me through a wall,” Ulic said without looking up from his exploration of Obi-Wan’s flex-comm.

“I did apologize for that.”

Ulic tossed the comm back to Obi-Wan. “Let’s just say that I’m leery of any further fits of temper.”

Obi-Wan shook his head and put the comm back on stand-by to conserve power. “You say that like a lack of blade would stop him.”

When there was no response, Obi-Wan looked up to find that Ulic was staring at him, one eyebrow raised in expectation.

Obi-Wan recalled his words and buried his face in his hands. “Dammit!”

“Am I missing something?” Qui-Gon asked.

“Lack of full integration,” Ulic answered, which Obi-Wan considered to be a poor explanation of the problem.

“It’s—” Obi-Wan dropped his hands, frustrated. “It’s not that—it’s _perspective.”_

“What he means,” Ulic said, “is that you can’t stuff that much personality and memory into a box for three decades without some unwanted side effects.”

“You mean fragmentation,” Qui-Gon said, catching on. “Like Vader.”

“I am not a fucking _fragment_ ,” Obi-Wan hissed, just as Ulic’s tea mug exploded into shrapnel.

Ulic rolled his eyes, shaking off dripping tea and bits of porcelain. “You are seriously not convincing me to give you sharp objects.”

Qui-Gon was lifting shards of ceramic into the air and putting them onto the kitchen counter. “That was a better result than actual, literal fire.”

Obi-Wan swallowed, unsure of what to make of his sudden outburst. Qui-Gon and Ulic were being calm and rational about it, which almost made it worse. “I feel like I'm the only person in the room who doesn't know something.”

“Yeah.” Ulic wiped his hands dry on his trousers. “So, the dissociation was the easy part.”

“You couldn't have mentioned that before?”

“I didn’t know if it was actually going to happen to you, Obi-Wan,” Ulic explained. “Everyone’s wired differently. I got complete, utter, miserable depression afterwards.”

Qui-Gon seemed grimly amused. “You, however, were never prone to misery.”

“Neurochemistry,” Obi-Wan realized, feeling like he'd been kicked. The twins had warned him, after all.

“Yep.” Ulic looked far too cheerful at the prospect. “Volatile fucking mood swings.”

Obi-Wan went outside, sat down on the courtyard steps, and proceeded to deliberately not think about anything at all. It wasn't quite true meditation, but it helped.

Qui-Gon joined him not long after he'd calmed down, sitting next to Obi-Wan without speaking. His presence was comforting, and helped some of the discomforting twist of nerves in his chest to ease.

“I'm fairly certain that I told my students recently that I don't actually _like_ being insane,” Obi-Wan said, when he thought he could hold a civil conversation again.

“Students, plural?”

He smiled. “Experiment. Give the functional psychotic a bunch of Jedi Shadows and see what develops.” It was nice to speak of his Shadows, to consider their personalities and accomplishments without rage coloring his every thought.

Qui-Gon was chuckling by the time he'd narrated some of their more interesting lessons. “They sound like a lively bunch.”

The smile dropped from Obi-Wan's face. “I lost four of them.”

Qui-Gon leaned in closer, taking Obi-Wan's hand when he held it out. “How?”

“One of them cracked. It...” Obi-Wan sighed. “I'd like to say it was avoidable, but it wasn't. It was old damage. Not even the two best mind Healers in the galaxy noticed it, he'd pieced the mess together so well.

“The worst thing? It wasn't even anything that he—” Obi-Wan grimaced. “That _I_ did. I honestly think I would have handled it better if it had been.”

“What happened?”

“I made him very, very dead,” Obi-Wan replied, trying not to grind his teeth when the memory surfaced with almost surreal clarity. “I just—he nearly killed Quinlan and Grierseer. He _did_ kill one of the most talented Shadows I've ever met, and then slaughtered an unarmed Healer, and I cannot decide if it's good or bad that I'd kill him a second fucking time if the choice were presented again.”

“I suppose that would depend on who was making the decision,” Qui-Gon said.

Obi-Wan shook his head. “I'm trying really hard not to be _him._ ”

“Why?” Qui-Gon didn't sound upset, just curious.

“There are parts of him that I...that I find very appealing," Obi-Wan said, and then had to smile, thinking of the great cats of Renndthall. “Just not the ones that you might think.”

“And killing Sidious?” Qui-Gon asked quietly. “Is that part of what is appealing?”

Obi-Wan's eyes narrowed. “That's just a bonus.”

“You've already killed him once,” Qui-Gon said. “Isn't that enough?”

It took him a moment to realize that Qui-Gon wasn’t referring to the Emperor’s death at Vader’s hands. “What? _When?_ I don't remember that!”

Qui-Gon didn’t seem to want to discuss it further, but gave in when Obi-Wan did nothing more than stare at him in expectation. “It happened on Coruscant.”

“Oh.” Obi-Wan couldn’t recall the event, which meant it was still lurking in his subconscious. That was a potential flashback that he wasn’t looking forward to at all.

“And here I thought you said you remembered everything,” Qui-Gon said, a gentle note of teasing in his voice.

Obi-Wan scowled at him. “Don't be so damned literal.”

Qui-Gon smiled in response to his ire. It jarred Obi-Wan to realize it was an expression he was more used to seeing on his Lifemate’s face—not on his Master’s.

“Ass. You can afford to be amused by this,” Obi-Wan grumbled, glaring down at the beach. “You're not the one who's crazy.”

“I liked ‘functional psychotic’ better,” Qui-Gon said.

Obi-Wan sighed. "So did I.”

 

*          *          *          *

 

“And there’s the drop,” Ulic said.

Qui-Gon glanced to his left to find that Obi-Wan had fallen asleep sitting up in his chair. His hair had fallen forward, shadowing his face. Despite knowing the situation was different, the tableau still gave his heart a painful lurch. There had been far too many times in the last few years when Qui-Gon had arrived on Tatooine and found Obi-Wan sleeping in that exact same way—not by choice, but from being so worn down from grief and stress.

“Is there no other way?”

Ulic snorted. “Not unless you want to reshape genetics and make him magically less stubborn. I warned you when this first started, Jinn: when you break yourself that damned effectively, it’s work to put it all to rights again, no matter how much we might wish it otherwise.”

Qui-Gon nodded, resigned. “I do know that.” Some days, he still discovered old damage to his own psyche, and he’d been working to repair that mess for decades now.

Ulic sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Honestly, I think the kid’s going to brea _k all_ of it, all over again, and then put it back together.”

“Which is exactly what worries me,” Qui-Gon said. He’d witnessed Obi-Wan break himself more than once in the past, and wasn’t looking forward to it again—especially given the uncertain nature of what those old breaks had already wrought.

“Qui-Gon.” Ulic smiled. “The process is going to be hell, but the result? That’s going to be _amazing._ ”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Bakaknight made me birthday fic, and yes, I'm considering it canon for RE: http://archiveofourown.org/works/2648684 *G*
> 
> Also, liandrin put together one hell of a Dropbox collection of fic. If you go here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/j8hw23lv5craay2/AADohthE0eBzqAzdXEMEQL2ta?dl=0 She has .epub and .mobi versions of Re-Entry and Journey of the Whills in complete form. (Plus pretty cover art!)
> 
> KittenFair is taking her own turn playing in the RE verse, based on things she's been doing 3,000 years in the past: http://archiveofourown.org/works/2656637 Force Ghosts get bored easily, and then there are problems that the living have to deal with.


End file.
